


the fossils have a better chance of coming to life than their relationship does

by katrinawritesthings



Category: SHINee
Genre: Brotp, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-10-21 03:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10676370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: paleontologist au, or as i like to call it, “if they didn't fucking hate each other they would probably get along”“You can dig out this alioramus claw and go as slow as you want, yeah?” Jonghyun makes his eyes big and round, coos the words out with a sweet little voice. “Play in the dirt like a good boy and I’ll come check on you in an hour when you’ve uncovered another millimeter!” He pinches Taemin’s chubby little cheek with a smirk.tumblr





	the fossils have a better chance of coming to life than their relationship does

Taemin is smug. Taemin is smug and amused and proud of himself as he takes his cute new dinosaur toys out of his bag and sets them up nice and pretty on top of his monitor. Triceratops, velociraptor, pterodactyl, a bunch of others that he doesn’t remember the names of…. There. Finished. They’re all super adorable and he loves them. He smiles at them, all in a little row in front of him, and pulls his real work out of his bag next to get started on. He’s going to get the results of that one nettle fossil back from the lab today and he wants to be all set up to analyze it as soon as possible. He thinks it’s a new one, for this area at least.

Jonghyun comes in twenty minutes later with Panera like usual, bustling and banging through the door with music blaring through his headphones. Taemin only clenches his fists a little bit this time. His palms barely even get little nail marks. He takes a cool sip of his banana smoothie, the one that he got _before_ he was supposed to already be at work, and waits. Jonghyun shuts his music off, and Taemin waits. Jonghyun hangs his jacket by the door and throws his lunch on the counter, and Taemin waits. Jonghyun walks by him without acknowledging him, stops, and turns around, and Taemin smiles.

“What the fuck are those,” Jonghyun asks quietly. He steps up close to Taemin’s desk and leans his whole face unnecessarily close to Taemin’s dinosaurs to squint at them. “What the fuck are these?” he asks again, turning to frown at Taemin. Taemin just smiles pleasantly back, reaching up to fix his velociraptor where it stands a little crooked. Jonghyun reaches over him and snatches it up. “This is completely wrong,” he snaps, scowling at it in distaste. “Why are its arms so fucked up? And their claws don’t do that. Why is this panoplosaurus’s jaw so big? Who the fuck told them that Corythosauruses were so short? Where did they even do their research on _wings_?”

“Do you like them?” Taemin asks innocently, a sweet smile on his lips as he watches Jonghyun’s curl into a snarl. “They were ever so popular at the store.”

“You fucking--” Jonghyun drops the dinosaur on Taemin’s desk, taking a deep breath and clenching and unclenching his fists. He turns around abruptly and stalks to his desk. Taemin hears him muttering from all the way on the other side of the room, like usual, except this time it just makes his smile grow. “Can’t fucking believe it… who the fuck approved… and people _pay money_ for that shit? Fucking little kids learning the wrong fucking… _ugh_ … bullshit pieces of scam shit….” Ahh, yes. Music to Taemin’s ears. He grins broadly as he works, scrolling through his notes from last night on the aquatic plant life of however many millions of years ago.

Ten minutes later, he hears Jonghyun stomping back to him and turns, not pleased. Jonghyun rudely knocks over all of Taemin’s cute dinosaur friends and slaps a few pieces of paper in front of him instead.

“Here,” he snaps, “fine art to decorate your workspace. Don’t ever bring this plastic trash within five miles of me again.” He kicks one dinosaur that fell onto the floor more under the desk and leaves again in a huff. Taemin frowns after him--he’s not picking up those toys--and looks at the papers. Then he snorts an extremely unattractive snort. Jonghyun’s aggressively drawn him anatomically correct versions of each dinosaur toy.

~

Even with coming in half an hour earlier than he usually does, Jonghyun barely finishes pressing his last [sticker](http://facebookstickers.info/downer-dinos/) (the Dislike Brontosaurus one) onto Taemin’s mousepad when he hears Taemin pushing open the door. He half sprints away from Taemin’s desk and crashes down heavily into his own chair, trying not to giggle too hard. He can’t believe he found those stickers just sitting in the dollar bin last week. What a stroke of fucking luck. He peeks over his shoulder when he hears Taemin setting his stuff down slowly.

On the other side of the room, Taemin just stands there, looking at all of the stickers. Jonghyun covers his mouth with his hand to muffle his snickering as he watches Taemin pick up his stapler and look at the disappointed crying dinosaur on it. Taemin looks up then, at Jonghyun, and Jonghyun feels his smile sliding right off of his face.

Taemin doesn’t look annoyed, or even angry; he just looks hurt, mouth tight and eyes a little rounder than usual. He doesn’t say a word to Jonghyun as he sits down heavily and starts to pick the sticker off. After a few moments, Jonghyun hears a tiny little sniffle. His heart drops low into his stomach. Ah. Ahh, shit. He’s fucked up. He gets up slowly, completely sobered by Taemin’s reaction, and inches across the room.

“Um, hey,” he says gently when he reaches Taemin’s desk. “Are you oka--”

“Fuck you,” Taemin snaps, whipping his head to look up at him with a glare. His eyes are watery and Jonghyun winces. Fuck.

“I didn’t mean to--”

“What have I done to you lately?” Taemin asks forcefully, cutting him off again. Jonghyun’s eyes flick to the inaccurate piece of shit dinosaur toy that’s still hanging out under Taemin’s desk from last Monday. Somehow he doesn’t think that that compares to this. “What have I done to you _ever_ to make you think that I deserve to feel like I’m shit literally as soon as I come into work?” Taemin’s voice breaks halfway through that sentence and he looks away, wiping angrily at his eyes before any tears can actually fall. Ah. Oh. Jonghyun lets out a slow breath. He gets it now.

He _knows_ that Taemin has self-esteem issues; he can’t believe that he ever thought that this would be a good idea. He could have-- _should_  have--done something else obnoxious in revenge instead. Taemin sniffles again as he tries to rip the sticker from his mouse pad and half of it gets left behind with some sticky residue. Jonghyun looks at the other stickers: the “Rude,” the “The Worst,” the “Everything is Terrible,” and sighs.

“Look,” he says quietly. “I’ll… I’ll get rid of these. Go get a smoothie or something.” Taemin doesn’t answer for a moment; he scratches angrily at the sticky leftovers on his mouse pad before throwing it back onto his desk in disgust. He stands up and doesn’t even look at Jonghyun as he feels up his pocket to check for his wallet.

“Put this in your fucking book,” he growls before walking out without another word.

Jonghyun watches him go guiltily, then sits in his chair and starts peeling off all of the stickers he put on barely five minutes ago. He does his best to get them all in one piece and rub off the rest, and then dumps them all in the trash can at his own desk. He doesn’t think he’s ever fucked up this bad. Once he’s done, he follows Taemin’s order and pulls out his Taemin Book, the one that he keeps to keep track of what’s acceptable and not acceptable when it comes to fucking with him.

Flipping through the list of things he likes about Taemin (cute butt, cute laugh, really dedicated, good cook, very comforting, covers for me, uplifting), the list of things he hates (extremely fucking anal, won’t let me borrow anything, overbearing, never fucking apologizes, overly critical, messy as fuck), and the list of acceptable ways to bug him (make dinosaur sculptures eat his plants, call literally every ancient plant a fern especially when it is obviously Not A Fern, give him ugly nicknames, tell him his lips are dry while making out, rearrange his stuff), he finds the “unacceptable” list at last. “Don’t touch his butt, don’t point out how much he blinks when he’s nervous, don’t talk down to him when he’s angry about important things…,” Jonghyun mumbles to himself, skimming through the list. There are several things in here about being gentle around his self-image and he’s ignored all of them. He sighs, underlining every one he sees and adding “No mean dinosaur stickers” as a new bullet point.

~

There’s a lumpy, anatomically correct t-rex clay sculpture on top of a lumpy, anatomically correct stegosaurus clay sculpture in Taemin’s flowerpot when he gets into work this morning. He looks at it for a moment, then shakes his head, smiling in spite of himself. He knew there would be a catch when Jonghyun came in the day after the Sticker Incident with new clay herbivore dinosaurs for him. He knew Jonghyun wouldn’t be able to just _give_ him a cute little present. At least he waited a few weeks before setting up this rude murder scene on his desk. Taemin looks at it for another moment, the rolls his eyes and grabs the t-rex.

Then he goes to Jonghyun’s desk, gathers up all of his carnivores, and puts them in sex positions. Ahh, yes. There. Perfect. He smiles to himself as he goes back to his desk, pleasantly staring up his computer and getting to work.

When Jonghyun comes in twenty minutes late like usual, he’s speaking to another vaguely familiar voice that Taemin can’t place from so far away. Oh, well. It’s probably not anyone important.

When Jonghyun opens the door and lets his companion in with a polite, “Yes, sir, I was just at the lab yesterday analyzing that centrosaurus frill,” Taemin freezes over his keyboard. Fuck. It’s someone _extremely_ important. He watches as Jonghyun leads their boss inside with wide eyes. Fuck. _Fuck_. He fucked up, he fucked up, he fucked up--

He desperately tries to signal to Jonghyun to not go to his desk without interrupting his conversation; It doesn’t work, and Jonghyun leads Jinki _right to_ the giant prehistoric orgy. Taemin winces when Jonghyun stops short in his explanation.

“Um,” Jinki says, and Taemin winces again when Jonghyun whips around to give him the most horrified look. He stands up out of his chair immediately and clumsily, scuttling over to the pair of them to fix his mistake.

“Uh, Jinki, um, about this,” he says quickly, gesturing at the dinosaurs. Jonghyun shuffles in front of the one foursome as un-subtly as possible, obviously deeming it to be the most offensive. “I wanted to play a quick prank on Jonghyun, you know, ha ha, very funny, only minute or two wasted from work.”

“Uh… huh,” Jinki says. He looks between the two of them slowly. Clattering from behind him tells Taemin that Jonghyun is struggling to break up the hot reptilian banging going on back there. “Well… I hope today you’ll be as busy as these little guys were.” He smiles, but Taemin still finds himself squinting at him in confusion. Was that a joke, or…? He discretely nudges Jonghyun’s side once; Jonghyun nudges him back twice quickly. Okay. It was a joke. Taemin forces himself to laugh through his anxiety, following Jonghyun’s lead.

“Ha ha, yeah, will do, sir,” Jonghyun says. He nods politely and Taemin mirrors him and they both keep their cheery smiles up until Jinki leaves them with a wave. Taemin only turns to Jonghyun once the door clicks shut behind him.

“I didn’t know you were bringing him here,” he hisses. Jonghyun looks at him for a moment--and then he laughs, snorts into giggles and covers his mouth.

“Holy fucking shit,” he says. Taemin finds himself laughing soon too, more from relief that Jonghyun or Jinki isn’t pissed at him than anything else. Jonghyun laughs even harder when he turns around to look at the remaining banging dinosaurs on his desk. “I should’ve done this to _you_ , fuck, this is great,” he grins. He pokes the 69ing velociraptors and Taemin grins as well, pushing him gently to the side to set up the foursome again. He was proud of that. Reverse cowgirl, rimming, and a blowjob, masterfully reenacted through lumpy, anatomically correct clay sculptures.

“Wanna get lunch together later?” Jonghyun asks, watching Taemin work with a wiggle of his eyebrows. Taemin cocks a brow at him, incredulous. He’s never asked that bluntly--but, then again, they’ve never been giggling over dinosaur sex like this. He guesses that they’re having one of their rare good days and he shrugs with a smile. He could go for some Subway later.

“If we don’t hate each other again by then, sure,” he agrees, leaving Jonghyun’s desk to go back to his own.

~

Jonghyun frowns as he watches Taemin fret over on the other side of the dig site.  He knew Taemin coming to this wouldn’t be the best idea. He himself doesn’t even usually go to these things--he’s better off and better skilled in the lab, analyzing the shit they bring back from digs like these--but they invited him, so he came along. They invited Taemin too, since they’d found some fossilized plants more uphill from here, but Taemin is even less experienced at this shit than Jonghyun is.

He’s over there, looking cute as a button in short jean shorts and a button-up with the sleeves rolled up, red hair clipped back into a little ponytail, making a fucking nuisance of himself as he hovers over everyone as they try to work.

“Hey--careful,” Jonghyun hears him snap for the umpteenth time. “You have to-- _gently._ ” The poor digger under Taemin turns to throw him an ugly scowl and Jonghyun has to agree. They _know_. They know how to do their own fucking job. This is what ticks him off the fucking most about Taemin; how he’s always so fucking obnoxious and anal and demanding when things aren’t being done exactly the way that he wants, how he always feels the need to tell people how to do things even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Jonghyun hates when he gets like this. He sighs, tossing his little shovel into the dirt and standing up.

Taemin is hovering over someone new and bugging them while they work when Jonghyun finally gets all the way up there. Jonghyun takes his shoulder gently but firmly and tugs him away, rolling his eyes when he notices that Taemin has his own little digging tools and has been wasting time instead of doing his own work.

“Come on," he says, tugging Taemin downhill to where his team is. Taemin frowns, but follows grudgingly, glancing back over his shoulder at the plant squad with a pout.

“They were being so fucking rough and I swear they chipped one and--”

“Shh,” Jonghyun frowns. “This is their job. They were literally trained for this. They know what they’re doing.” Taemin blinks at him, and then scowls like he thinks Jonghyun is wrong. Jonghyun knows that he isn’t. He pulls Taemin all the way down to where he was in the dirt. “Here,” he says cheerily. “You can dig out this Alioramus claw and go as slow as you want, yeah?” He makes his eyes big and round, coos the words out with a sweet little voice. “Play in the dirt like a good boy and I’ll come check on you in an hour when you’ve uncovered another millimeter!” He pinches Taemin’s chubby little cheek with a smirk--and then Taemin slaps his hand away with a glare.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking child,” he snaps. He sits down heavily in the dirt, props his chin up in his hand, and glowers at the claw embedded in the ground, reaching forward to brush away dust. Jonghyun stares at him like that for a minute, taken aback. Holy shit. He didn’t even realize. Or, he did, but he forgot that it was wrong. He sighs shortly, running his fingers through his hair. He has his book to write this shit down for a reason. Why does he always forget? Taemin gently, gently, gently chips away a dried piece of earth from the claw and Jonghyun frowns down at him, disappointed in himself.

“I’m sorry,” he says shortly. Taemin looks up at him, blinking in confusion.

“What?” he asks. Jonghyun sighs again and sits down next to the half-uncovered tail.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes again. “You’re right. I was treating you like a kid and that was fucked up.”

“I… oh,” Taemin says. He looks away from Jonghyun’s eyes, never able to look at him when he gets real like this. Jonghyun can tell that he’s getting all appreciative and shit inside. Taemin goes back to his work without saying a word, continuing to avoid his gaze. Jonghyun can’t tell if he’s forgiven or not, and Taemin still hasn’t admitted that he was being kind of an anus, and he frowns, but shrugs and goes back to work himself. They’ll work it out eventually.

~

“I fucking despise you,” Taemin mutters, and then he groans because Jonghyun bit his lip in reply.

“Same,” Jonghyun breathes, fingers pressing into Taemin’s sides through his shirt. Taemin shoots his fingers through Jonghyun hair to simultaneously pull him closer and tug painfully hard. Jonghyun growls against his lips and kisses him even more forcefully. He gets a firm grip on Taemin’s hips and pushes him backwards until Taemin collides painfully with the wall and hisses through his teeth.

They’re both so fucking weak. They always wind up like this, angrily making out because they hate each other so much but can’t fucking stand how hot the other is. Taemin blames Jonghyun’s muscles and the way they always make his sleeves bulge slightly with their bulk. No fucking _fossil analyst_ should be this ripped. He gets his hands on Jonghyun’s arms and digs his nails into the skin as he feels him up greedily. If he was into sex at all it would probably be with Jonghyun and he would have way more bruises than he ever gets from their quick hatesnogs in the office.

If he was into dating at all, and if Jonghyun would just stop being a cocky asshole and act more like the sweet, chill, responsible guy Taemin knows he can be, they might be able to get a thing going. He knows that Jonghyun feels the same way about him. He would delicately describe their attitudes towards each other as “If half of the shit you did didn’t piss me the fuck off I would actually probably like you.” Both of them are too stubborn to change, though, so they grudgingly tolerate each other most days and reluctantly admit that the other is pretty admirable on others. And sometimes, they just aggressively make out until all of their built-up frustrations over the passed while are gone.

He doesn’t even remember how this started this time. He thinks they were arguing about the dig site thing last month, and Taemin was refusing to admit that he was wrong, and Jonghyun was getting all smug and infuriating and condescending like usual, and Taemin was getting all up into his face, and then suddenly they were making out. Who the fuck knows. They probably would have wound up like this no matter what they were fighting about. At least this usually ends one long, revenge-filled line of fuckery. They’re back to clean slates and it should be at least a week before one of them fucks with the other again. Then they get to go through everything all over again.


End file.
